1. The Field of the Invention
The present invention is related to a device for organizing, storing, viewing and retrieving "cents off" or discount shopping coupons. In particular, the present invention relates to a coupon holder which includes a plurality of transparent windows uniquely positioned on a plastic sheet for providing efficient access to coupons.
2. Technical Background
Many product manufacturers and retailers, particularly those selling grocery and other items which are typically marketed through supermarket or similar stores, offer discount coupons to consumers as an enticement to purchase specific products. Such coupons are circulated to consumers through a variety of means, most generally through newspapers and direct mail. Through the use of coupons, consumers are able to save substantial sums of money on their purchases.
The effective use of discount coupons generally requires significant time and effort on the part of the consumer. Not only must the consumer initially clip the coupons--which may number up to 100 each week--the coupons must be organized in some fashion. It will be appreciated that the accumulation of hundreds of discount coupons can be done fairly easily. In order to make "coupon shopping" reasonably efficient, a consumer must be able to quickly locate a specific coupon from the many that he or she may be carrying.
Consequently, many methods for holding and organizing coupons have been proposed to enable the consumer to locate a coupon for a particular item. One such method is to use several envelopes, with each envelope labeled with a different category of items, such as cereal, canned goods, household goods, etc. The consumer then organizes the coupons by placing each coupon in its appropriate envelope.
When the coupon is needed, the consumer can locate the envelope corresponding to the category of the item to be purchased and sort through the coupons in that envelope until the desired coupon is located. However, a significant disadvantage to this method is that, over time, a consumer may collect so many coupons for each category that it becomes time consuming and burdensome to sort through the coupons one at a time until the desired coupon is located.
Several variations on the "envelope" method have also been developed. These include small accordion-type books which include a divider or large pocket on each page for holding coupons. Generally, each divider or pocket is labeled according to a category. Such alternate methods suffer from the same disadvantages as using individual envelopes--coupons must generally be handled and viewed one at a time in order to locate and retrieve a particular coupon. Consequently, these methods cannot be used to quickly identify whether the consumer has a particular coupon and, even when the consumer knows that he or she has a particular coupon, such methods still require a substantial amount of time to locate the coupon.
From the foregoing, it can be seen that it would be an advancement in the art to provide a device for organizing and holding coupons which would enable a consumer to quickly determine whether he or she has a particular coupon.
It would also be an advancement in the art to provide such a device which would facilitate the task of locating a particular coupon which is believed to be in the consumer's possession.
It would be a further advancement in the art to provide such a device which could be used to organize and hold coupons in such a way as to accommodate the many combinations of various sized coupons which a consumer may collect.
Indeed, it would be an additional advancement if such a device were compact and could be easy to manufacture, thereby enabling it to be provided to the consumer at a low price.
Such a coupon organizer is disclosed and claimed herein.